


Mirage

by Jester85



Series: The Ghost of You [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 09:41:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6849295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jester85/pseuds/Jester85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot of the first reunion between Bucky and Steve in Captain America: Civil War from Bucky's perspective.  Canon compliant.  Can be interpreted as slash or friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirage

He's tired.

The same vague, bone-deep weariness he's known for the last two years tugs at every movement of his body through a street of teeming humanity.  He has his hat pulled down low over his face, black gloves covering both his flesh-and-blood hand and the metal one HYDRA gave him, and no one pays him any attention.  He wonders if they looked at him too close, if they could see the darkness in his eyes, the shadows of all he's done, The Soldier peeking out.

Still, he supposes, it's better than feeling nothing at all.

He enjoys himself-- _enjoys, is that a right word?_ \--slightly at the food market though.  These quaint street vendors unfurling tents over their wares, hawking prices at the crack of dawn, it brings back vague sense memories he can't quite place-- _"We spent all our train money on hot dogs, Stevie, we're flat broke_ "--but settle his heart somehow.  Strangely, Bucharest almost feels.....homey.

He haggles over the price of the plums with the old woman with the lined, weary, but not unkind face-- _the kind of face you'd see from the old working Irishwomen in Brookyln, Mrs. Cassidy who threatened to box his ears if he didn't stop getting in fights--_ and then takes six.  He'd "Googled"-- _the word still sat strange on his tongue_ \--that plums had slowed memory loss in Alzheimer's patients.  What he had was a long way from Alzheimer's-- _though who knew how long before his brains started running out his nose, with how many times HYDRA made scrambled eggs out of him--_ but he figured it couldn't hurt.

He stands for a minute to collect himself, as he does often, blinking and breathing and making sure he's really here, this sidewalk, feet on the ground, the oddly reassuring weight of his plums hanging bagged at his side.

It's when he refocuses that he notices the man across the street is staring at him.

Bucky's shadowed eyes flick furtively away-- _he knows how to not be obvious watching a target--_ but in his peripheral vision, he can  _feel_ the man's stare laying heavy on him, like a pulsing in his temple.

Slowly, he crosses the street.  He's not halfway across before the man bolts like a deer in headlights.  The pulse is a throb by the time he reaches the abandoned newspaper stand, eyes widening in shock and disbelief as he translates the headline blaming The Winter Soldier, blaming him, for a bombing at United Nations headquarters in Vienna.

He should have known this couldn't last.  This meager peace.  It was too much to ask for, and more than he deserved.  

Suddenly, he feels the prickle of every face around him, eyes roaming over him, like they all knew.  His ghosts, his victims, the blood spilled over fifty years of assassinations and death and murder and--" _Your work has been a gift to mankind"_ \--coming for him, in broad waking daylight now instead of just his nightmares.

It was only ever a matter of time, he supposed.

* * *

He is in his apartment, and Captain America-- _Rogers, Steven Grant--_ is there, like a damn desert mirage, back turned, rifling through the memories/dreams/hallucinations/whatever scribbled into a notebook.  Even from here, Bucky can see the way The Captain pauses over his own picture, a photograph of one of his portraits in the Smithsonian, sandwiched between the ink-splattered pages.

His mind is firing in different directions, and he doesn't know what to do.  Part of him wants to bolt.  Part of him feels the need to be close to this man.  This man, this super-soldier like him, he pulled from the Potomac two years ago.  But somehow this hulking man with his broad shoulders, muscles rippling even through his uniform, is also Steve, and Bucky doesn't know how to process that.  Because this is Steven Grant Rogers, but it's not  _Stevie._ Yet somehow it is.  The instinctual pull, like breathing, he feels toward this intruder, his former opponent, is not toward this huge figure, but a skinny waif who'd blow over in a strong breeze, whose straw hair fell over blue-green eyes and whose breath came sick and wheezing in the cold.  Bony body wrapped in his arms, trying to stop the shivering, in a too-small bed.  He couldn't cradle this man in his arms.  This man could envelop him.  Overpower him.  And that....that should be alarming, but Bucky wants him to.  Wants it like a cracked parched desert wants rain.  Wants to take two steps forward and fall into Captain America's...Steve's...Stevie's (?) arms.  He hasn't been touched by anyone in so long.  As weak and pathetic as it sounds, The Winter Soldier wants a hug.

His feet are bolted to the floor.  He does nothing.

Steve turns, then, some instinct alerted to his presence, although Bucky hasn't budged in 30 seconds.  Their eyes, Steve's blue-green always so earnest, searching, hopeful, looking for his Bucky.

"Do you know me?" he asks, in his Captain voice, firm, stern, authoritative, but Bucky can hear the yearning, the hope, he's trying his damndest to cover up.

"You're Steve," he hedges, the words coming out rusty.  He hasn't spoken English for a while.  It feels like a second language to him.  Bucky Barnes spoke English, but The Winter Soldier rarely did, when he spoke at all.  "I read about you in a museum."

Steve takes a small step closer.  Bucky wants to run.  Wants to meet him halfway.  Wants to...

"I know you're nervous," The Captain is saying.  Captain Voice again.  "And you have good reason to be."  His eyes, always so open, fix on his again, like he can see straight through him.  "But you're lying."

Bucky decides to stop bothering.  "I wasn't in Vienna.  I don't do that anymore."

Steve glances out the window.  His breathing and heartbeat are picking up.  Something attracting his attention.  "Well the people who think you did are on their way here, now, and they're not planning on taking you alive."

Confirmation settles like a stone in the pit of his stomach, and Bucky can't quite keep the bitter twist out of his toneless voice when he says "That's smart.  Good strategy."

Rogers looks like he wants to come closer, say more.  His eyes watch him with a hopeful wariness, like a kindly man trying to entice a stray dog.  "This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck."

Bucky almost rolls his eyes.  So damn _sincere_.  Optimistic.  Naive.  He tugs off the glove, sees the silver gleam.  HYDRA's parting gift, ensuring they would be with him forever.  But it has its uses.

"It always ends in a fight."

Steve is agitated now, eyes darting at exits.  Bucky knows they have seconds.

"You pulled me from the river!"  His voice rises in agitation, exasperation, and other emotions Bucky can't quite identify.  "Why?"  
  


Bucky's brow furrows.  He doesn't know how to articulate the answer, if he even has one.  Some primal instinct seized him back then, sent him plunging into the Potomac after the man he'd been beating to an inch of his life moments before.

_'Cause I'm with you to the end of the line._

"I don't know."

Even as the words leave his mouth, they feel hollow and metallic, and he knows they sound that way to Rogers too.

Those damn eyes, catching his own, seeing through him, seeing all of him.  Can't he see the Soldier too?  But they're warm, and kind, and Bucky doesn't want to look away.

"Yes you do."

He never was able to lie to Stevie.

The doors and windows blow open.

He's been here too long anyway.


End file.
